Event times not accurate
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I received this email from one of my www.TeleSeminarNation.com members...
Hi Dan -
Today I posted an event and the same calendar issue happened. I posted it from my computer with the correct time of Noon-2PM on March 5th (Thriving in a Tough Economy). I went to my husband's computer to view it and it displays in the calendar as 9-11AM.
Help?! Thanks - again!
Mary
... she's contacted me with the same issue in the past.
To eliminate the possibility that his computer's clock was set wrong, I contacted 3 friends in the same time zone and asked what they saw. Two of them reported seeing the same incorrect time of 9-11 am.
Can you please look into this?
Thank you.
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Dan, the event times displayed in a Groupsite's calendar are not impacted by the time setting on a user's computer. The are impacted by the Time Zone setting that the user has selected in their Member Profile.
My first thought would be to 1) ask the user to verify the Time Zone setting that is selected within her and/or her friends' profiles, and 2) ask her to verify that she is logged-in (as herself) when seeing an "incorrect" time on her husband's computer. If she and/or her friends discover they did need to correct the Time Zone setting in their profile, they may also need to hit their browser "refresh" button or clear their browser cache before any changes will appear on their Calendar.
If we rule out the above possibilities and she is simply experiencing something "weird," we'll take a look and/or try to duplicate the issue to isolate when and where it's occurring.
If you'd like, please have the member contact us (support@collectivex.com) so we may assist her directly.
Are you saying that accurate information is presented only when someone logs in?
If so, that's a different issue. The calendar is the most important feature of my site and I need it to display accurate information to all visitors (regardless of membership status) and without them having to clear their cache (who would know to that?).
Is that not possible with CollectiveX?
Dan - I know our calendar has been a love/hate relationship for you and I share your pain. You are absolutely correct on all of your observations and feedback. We have active tickets in to remedy these issues including the latest one regarding what users see if they are not logged in (which we had never even thought about - if you can imagine).
Once the tickets are cleared, each event will show the timezone next to the time for each event both in the calendar view and in the upcoming events module view.
I realize the calendar is the most important feature for you. It is important for us as well but, unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of choosing a "most important" feature. All features are our "most important" or we wouldn't offer them as a feature.
If 90% of our users aren't using it 90% of the time, we probably aren't going to pay much (or any) of attention to it.
Your requests matter to us and we are trying to get them resolved as soon as we can.
Shaun
Shaun,
when people vixit our website, www.oeNYFingerLakes.groupsite.com, they see time zones in the calendar as PST, instead of EST. When people log in, they see the correct EST time zone. We are trying to draw people to our events who haven't joined our site yet. How can we correct things so that our website lists events in Eastern Standard Time?
Ralph - Great question. Here is what is happening, before a person logs into a Groupsite, the system has no way of knowing their timezone. Auto-detecting this from their IP address doesn't help because they could be logging in from an airport or from someone else's computer. What we do, is present the events based on the timezone of the person who posted the event (when viewed by somone who is not logged in).
Once they log in, we show the times based on their timezone that they have registered in their My Settings tab.
One way to hedge this is to include the time and timezone (0900 EST) in the event name and or event description.
Hope that helps,
Shaun
(REVISION 9/2/09: System has been updated - We now present event times to someone not logged-in based on the default time zone setting of the Groupsite, as determined by a Groupsite manager in the MANAGER > Groupsite Settings > General Settings" area).
Shaun,
I am just now seeing your response. This response isn't my problem. My problem is that the time zone for events which appear on our website http://oeNYFingerlakes.groupsite.com, appear correctly as eastern time when one is logged in. But, when one isn't logged in, ALL events appear in pacific time, even if the events were entered by persons in the eastern time zone. How can we change things so that the time zone that appears when the casual person browsing the website sees events in eastern time?
We are one of 16 affiliates of Out & Equal, which is based in California. Could that have something to do with our problem? Is our site somehow linked with all other affiliates?
Hi Howard and Shaun -
Yes, I think this happens since I create the groupsites, and I am in SF. Shaun, is there a way to re-set the time zone for a groupsite, or make a local user the "owner" so that generic viewings have the correct timings? (Or even better, that an event can include the time zone when it's created.)
Thanks!
Stephen
This is an ongoing issue for my site, too. Many of my visitors are non-members, so this means that much misinformation (times) is being viewed.
My ideal scenario would be to have an option to turn the time zone feature off, and force calendar posters to enter their time zone. I would rather have visitors have to do the time zone conversions, than continue to give them incorrect times. The latter scenario does not serve my members or visitors.
We won't be able to turn the timezone feature off, but I think an option to change the default timezone is what is needed.
Bryan, the ability to change the default timezone would be terrific. Anything you can do to prioritize this would be much appreciated. For private groupsites, this isn't a problem, since everyone has to sign in to participate. But, for public groupsites, with members from multiple time zones, where people do not have to sign in to view the calendar, it is definitely confusing for people. Thanks for pursuing this.
We are also working on adding a display of the time zone for events. That should further clarify for visitors who are not logged in.
Everyone - we've made a few changes that should improve your customers' experience:
1) Ability for Groupsite Managers to change the default time zone. This can be important to groups with "Limited" and "Public" visibility. This setting determines the time zone that displays to non-members (visitors who are not logged-in) when they view calendar events. This setting applies to both calendar events and summaries in calendar-type content modules.
The control for this is located in the MANAGER > Group Settings > General Settings area.
Of course, when members visit your Groupsite they'll continue to view event information according to the time zone selected in the "Personal Data" area of their Member profile.
2) Time Zone displays - in various areas of your Groupsite - including in calendar-type content module summaries, the "Display" menu area of your "Month" view; in "List" view and in the event details a visitor sees when they click on an event.
Thanks for your continued feedback and let us know what you think of the changes!
This should be very helpful - thanks Diana andt he Groupsite team.
I am thrilled!!! Thanks to everyone on the Groupsite Team for implementing this correction for our online experience with calendar events.